Fleet Management

Information Technology

The key disrupter in recent years has been the Internet, which has changed the way a number of industries operate. In trucking, e-commerce has profoundly affected trucking operations, especially those that serve retailers.

Omnitracs announced it had agreed to acquire XRS Corp., Minneapolis, in a deal valued at $178 million. Approved unanimously by XRS’ board of directors, the deal is expected to be finalized by the fourth quarter of this year.

Today, fleets have an alternative to on-site rooms full of computer servers – using a hosted environment for your computing needs, known as cloud computing. In the cloud computing environment, the servers are maintained by a third party (or maybe your enterprise software vendor) and fleets access applications and data via a web interface.

A number of trucking companies – and thousands of other types of businesses for that matter – run their businesses on what would be considered a “legacy” IT system. Those old workhorse servers might still be getting the job done, but they could be holding your business back.

Most large fleets have extensive experience with telematics: GPS location and mobile communications systems that collect data and communicate it back to a server where the fleet can access the information. As the amount and kind of data has increased in recent years, fleets have adopted tools to make sense of all that information and use it across their operation.

Whether you operate one truck or 1,000, monitoring and managing costs is one of your most important tasks. Fleets have used technology to help them control costs for some time, but the latest third- or fourth-generation systems are capable of generating tremendous amounts of information fleets can put to use.

Although technology has enabled us to collect so much data now, does having vast amounts of it really make us any smarter? Negotiating fuel-discount programs won't do you much good unless you know how to make sense of the fueling data.

Intelligent highways, smart vehicles, connected transportation systems – sounds like the stuff of the future. In reality, though, many technologies currently found on our roadways reflect that future. In many cases they will be integral components of an intelligent transportation system. And the most important piece of technology might be the one most everyone now carries in their pocket, purse or backpack.

A trucking company decided to give out an award for the best driver, so they asked employees to nominate and vote on the honor. The winner, however, turned out to have one of the worst safety records in the fleet.

Cargo Transporters, Claremont, N.C, wasn’t doing much re-occuring driver training other than a few defensive driving classes, but in 2010 decided to require six hours of either online or classroom training. It was so successful that in 2011 they increased it to eight hours, according to President Dennis Dellinger.

Although technology has been able to reduce the trucking industry's reliance on paper, it hasn't been able to completely cut it out. Paperwork still has to be signed and submitted before a carrier or driver can get paid.

Technology in the shop is nothing new; in fact, it's absolutely necessary to diagnose, troubleshoot and repair today's trucks. But fleets are finding there are technologies they can use outside of the shop to monitor vehicle health and diagnose problems

Cloud computing has been getting a lot of attention in the information technology space. Before you put your head in the cloud, though, there are some things you should understand about the concept of cloud computing

In the first year after adopting electronic logs, Cargo Transporters, Claremont, N.C., had not only reduced out-of-service violations related to hours of service, but it also had improved its CSA "Driver Fatigue" BASIC score and was able to cut its compliance staff by 50%

By Christian Schenk, Vice President of Market Development & Product Marketing, Xata Corp.

Increased regulation. Demanding customers. Driver shortages. These are just a few reasons why the trucking industry is embracing mobile technology and the affordable fleet management solutions that run on cell phones, smartphones, tablet computers and other handheld devices

In the abstract, reducing fuel cost represents a pretty straightforward undertaking: Get as many miles as possible out of every gallon of fuel, pay as little as possible for those gallons, and reduce the number of miles each truck travels to get the job done

Most of us have done of these things manually for so long that the thought of automating can seem overwhelming -- something only the big boys do. Today, technology innovation has put automation within the reach of any carrier.

When Randy Seals, customer advocate for McLeod Software, managed operations for a trucking company years ago, his boss would come in month after month asking the same question: "How are we doing?" Seals would respond, "Looks like we're doing great." He wasn't lying. They were moving a ton of freight